In typical point of sale systems for retail stores, a set of special purpose computers are positioned at the retail check-out locations. These are locally networked with a server located at the site of the retail store. For many retail stores, this requires a level of system maintenance responsibility that is beyond the staff capabilities of the retailer or too costly. In this invention, the point of sale system is designed so that it is provided as a service shared among participating retail vendors. With this kind of an architecture, the invention provides the service security, data integrity, robustness and redundancy.
This invention relates to a system and method for executing sale transactions and managing the data associated with the transaction, for example, pricing and inventory. Typical point-of-sale systems have dedicated point of sale devices that are connected over a local area network to a local server computer dedicated to that specific vendor's system. Other systems use credit card readers that are connected by a wide are network to a system that clears the transaction, but the actual sale transaction data is managed using the dedicated system. In general, these dedicated systems are costly to buy and maintain. As a result, there is a need for a sale transaction data management system that can be shared by more than one vendor and offered as a service to these vendors, rather than a system that each vendor has to own and maintain.